The farmer’s market was exceptionally good yesterday, there’s a pre 10 am window that’s crucial to good scores. One booth smokes its own chipotle peppers and has given new meaning to tex mex. Beets, squash, very attractive. Shiny thai chillies and smooth orange habernos.

The other new grocery store downtown has supplied some awesome cumin. Discovering the purpose of cumin last year, life changing. Second only to garlic or onions in flavour versitility — it has to be whole, not ground. Crumbles in the fingers. Mexican, Indian, whatever. It’s the mystery spice.

Experimenting with french lentils, and homemade chicken stock. Roasted a butterflied chicken (the butterflying makes all the difference), made simple old-school stock from the bones a couple days later. Soaked French lentils, baby carrots, white onion. The vegetables sauteed with a little bacon and combined with still hot stock. The french lentils seem to have less of a mush factor than ordinary red varieties, very tasty.

The week before was a celery soup sprinkled with blue cheese; onion, broth, celery.

Spinach and feta perogies dominate. Inexpensive mass market Cheemo kind of thing, can be cooked like dumplings for a few minutes right before serving a bowl of soup. Bam, easiest meal for one with a double score of comfort foods.

Testing thai wraps relying on peanut butter and cilantro alongside hot peppers and sweet chili sauce. Spinach and shredded carrots. Thai is an ultimate goal because it’s so inconsistent and the flavours aren’t as easy to mass produce as vietnamese or chinese, thus takeout aside from green curry can be an exercise in unhappy experimentation. Good thai = manna.